by Jeff Jackson
—Okay, okay, he says. But don’t walk through the woods alone.
—I’m getting the hell out of here as fast as possible.
—Let me walk with you, the boy says. I feel awful. It’s the least I can do.
The boy speaks in a distressed mumble. His voice has the softness of someone unused to making demands, and his pleading tone possesses an alarming sincerity. These days, she’s unaccustomed to any sort of understanding. If she pays too close attention, it could prove seriously disorienting.
* * *
They linger at the trailhead. A weed-choked strip littered with crushed beer cans. Xenie pulls her hands inside her sweater and hugs the bunched white fabric to her chest.
—So, she says, what instrument do you play?
The boy looks perplexed.
—I don’t play anything, he says.
—You’re not in the band?
—I’m sort of their manager.
She examines him more thoroughly: Messy nest of brown hair, collared shirt, moth-eaten cardigan. Short and skinny. Fragile but intense. Maybe she’s underestimated him.
—You can never tell these days, she says. Everybody is in a fucking band.
The boy must think he’s being insulted. He effects a lockjaw expression and stands straighter, but this accomplishes nothing more than making the argyle pattern of his cardigan seem crooked.
—I know I look preppy, he says, but I’m pretty punk rock in my own way.
Xenie tries to stifle her laughter, but the sound keeps bubbling to the surface. A series of high-pitched giggles, springing loose through clenched teeth, rising in a steady spiral of escalating titters.
And I thought I was delusional.
She lets the boy accompany her into the forest. She starts out before second thoughts can settle in. They tramp across pine needles and knobby roots. Surrounded by the stickiness of abandoned webs. The pulsations of insects. Distant birdsong.
—My name is Xenie, she says. For the record.
—I’m Eddie, the boy says.
—Eddie, she says. That’s a kid’s name. I’m calling you Edward.
Xenie remains a few paces ahead. Since Shaun’s death, it’s felt like a slight to his memory to spend time alone with anyone. Now even a simple walk through the woods is suspect, threatening to loosen the scorching throb in her throat. The secret she’s swallowed these many months.
* * *
The breeze carries a chill, as if the woods are establishing their own climate. The trees squeeze together and the meager light filtering through the canopy progressively pales. As the shadows thicken, the trail becomes more theoretical.
—You know the way, right?
—Relax, Edward, she says.
She leads them over the fallen branches obscuring the path, through the dead leaves that crackle underfoot. Her boots stomp ahead, heedless.
* * *
The paths keep forking in front of them. There are routes rutted by dirt bikes, trampled by ambling teenagers, blazed long ago as part of forgotten official thoroughfares. Xenie tries to muster the energy to recall the trails she knew in her youth when she drifted through here in search of illicit treasure. Unused fireworks, abandoned porno magazines, unopened cans of beer. The treehouse she discovered one afternoon in a remote quadrant of the forest, camouflaged high in the branches. She feels impossibly distant from that more innocent person and wonders whether these woods hold anything she might still consider to have value.
* * *
Odd flowers peer out beneath the weeds and underbrush. Their twisting stems culminate in strange suppurating blooms. A fresh mutation struggling to manifest itself. A furtive efflorescence of the forest floor.
* * *
Without realizing it, they keep accelerating the pace. They’re both trying not to think about the most infamous rumor involving these woods. How several years ago a group of drifters stole corpses from a nearby morgue and hauled them back to their encampment. There were persistent speculations about a black market in human organs. Supposedly the police found a collection of dismembered heads, limbs, torsos. Some claim this is pure legend, but the story became a permanent part of Arcadia’s lore. Some of her friends swear they’ve seen the classified police photographs detailing the carnage in these woods. One of the news images from the early days of the epidemic showed corpses arranged on a sidewalk outside a punk club, covered with tarps, awaiting the coroner. Xenie imagines the scene was similar, flesh arranged in neat columns, tagged and numbered, awkward stumps of meat cradled in white cloth.
We’re both either really brave or really stupid.
Eddie hums under his breath. She figures it’s an attempt to maintain his courage. The sound is less song than soft moan, a barely melodic exhalation of breath, an increasingly annoying nervous tic. It never resolves into a recognizable refrain, remaining an unconscious broadcast of muddled private reflections.
—Can I ask you something? he says. About what happened back at the theater?
Xenie balls the white fabric between her hands. Bunched among the folds, the letters of her name are embroidered in raised blue stitches. A customization she had to cover from her first paycheck.
—It’s not a dress, she says. It’s a waitress uniform.
—I got fired this morning, she says, if you must know.
—I was attacked by my manager and had to defend myself, she says. It’s lucky I was able to get my hands on a knife.
—I’m so sorry, Eddie says. I might know some people who could talk to that bastard. Maybe get your job back.
Xenie doesn’t reply. As they walk on, Eddie continues to intone indistinct sounds, stunted vibrations far from any actual tune.
* * *
Xenie tries to block out the wind rustling through the trees. It sounds too much like the whispering voices at the diner, the other waitresses who were spooked by her dark moods, the cashier who kept leaving her brochures for grief counseling, the hostess who avoided speaking to her for fear the conversation might turn to her dead boyfriend. Xenie became an unwelcome reminder of the town tragedy. The pariah who always collected the largest tips. Her coworkers sincerely pitied her plight and sincerely wanted her to disappear from their lives.
* * *
Xenie says: My manager didn’t exactly attack me. He told me I couldn’t wear this sweater anymore.
—My manager told me it smelled, she says. He said it was disgusting. He said he was sorry, but it was freaking out the entire diner. Customers were complaining. My coworkers couldn’t take it.
—I didn’t think it was any of his business what I wore, she says. So I grabbed a knife and expressed my point of view. If the cook hadn’t stopped me, I swear to Christ I’d have carved him a new pair of nostrils.
* * *
Xenie tears off a fresh strip of white fabric from the uniform. She wraps it round her middle finger until it throbs. She remembers staring at her hands while her manager lectured her in the kitchen. Surrounded by the smell of seared meat and grilled onions. The unrelenting percolation of the coffeemaker. Her coworkers had vanished, and the only person she could see was the man with the comb-over in the corner booth, picking at his scrambled eggs while fixated on his murder mystery. She felt light-headed listening to her manager’s words. As she steadied herself on the counter, her fingers encountered a steel paring knife. With the tip of her thumb, she evaluated the sharpness of the blade.
* * *
Eddie seems like he wants to say something, but he remains silent. These days Xenie is well versed in the various expressions and unlikely combinations of pity, disgust, and anger, but he looks at her with a countenance that she can’t define. Maybe it’s empathy, because she has only the roughest guess what that might possibly look like.
* * *
Xenie pulls the purple sweater over her mouth and inhales deeply. The odor makes her eyes water. A rank mixture of spilled whiskey, spicy cologne, and sour perspiration that adds up to something indefinable. The smell of
Shaun. It gives her a flash of the first time he visited her bedroom. Him sprawled on the carpet, combing through her music collection as if it were her diary. They both understood the bond created by appreciating the qualities of certain bands, the emotional shorthand of adoring certain songs. She watched closely to see which album he’d select from the shelves, pleased when he plucked an obscure compilation of early rock-and-roll ballads, a record few people would’ve noticed. It wasn’t a choice calculated to impress, and he was genuinely moved by those quietly soulful songs. He played the album over and over, his pinkie tracing the various titles, as if trying to commit the tunes to memory. She knew then they’d be together for a long time. She loved how transported he looked as the music spun, absorbed by the sound of those voices, so yearning and disembodied.
Promise me, darling, your love in return.
May this fire in my soul, dear, forever burn.
Thunder rumbles overhead, loud as cannon shot. They pause to listen as the sound rolls across the sky in waves. Eddie stops humming. Or maybe he’s stopped for a while.
—I actually wanted to ask you something else about the theater, Eddie says. Why did you let them take the amp?
—Because Florian is an asshole, Xenie says. He’s never liked me. He and Shaun drifted apart after I came into the picture. I know he thinks it’s my fault.
—That stuff happens all the time. He wouldn’t blame you.
—I wasn’t at Shaun’s last show, Xenie says. I should’ve gone that night, but I wasn’t there. A lot of people know that. I’m sure Florian knows it, too. He was needling me.
—I don’t think that’s what he was saying.
—He was making a point, Xenie says. He was trying to make me feel like shit.
* * *
The trail is carpeted with blackened balls of yellow fruit. They’re everywhere underfoot. When Xenie steps on them, the rotted ovals either rupture or sink deeper into the porous earth. The entire ground looks bruised.
* * *
—I’ve known Florian since we were ten years old, Eddie says. Maybe he’s the sort of asshole who’d break into a theater to get an amp, but he wouldn’t try to humiliate you. He’s not that kind of asshole.
He removes his glasses and wipes them with the hem of his shirt. His exposed eyes seem smaller, his molelike squint unexpectedly steely.
—Not many people know this, he says, but his real name is Bruce. He started calling himself Florian in junior high. His family is poor and he’s always wanted to seem exotic. A couple of years ago, his mother was shot by somebody who broke into their house. Florian passed out at her funeral. It was awful. He’s been high-strung ever since. Now sometimes he’s an asshole even though he isn’t one.
I don’t want to know about Florian.
I don’t care about Florian.
There’s a rustling sound nearby. A few yards ahead, a trio of deer hurtles past, heedlessly tearing through the forest, zipping around trees and lilting over branches. The white flags of their tails streak in and out of view. These frightened animals must be fleeing something, but the predators are nowhere to be seen.
* * *
Xenie and Eddie remain tensed. The entire forest sounds amplified. The charged air crackles, threatening to feed back. A current bristles through the treetops. Maybe it’s the sound of raindrops spattering the highest leaves, or the sway of wind-frazzled twigs, or nervous birds shifting in their nests. Gradually, the noises subside until there’s only the shallow exhalations of their own pinched lungs. They don’t see anyone, but they spot something unusual in a nearby stand of maples. Dangling from the branches, attached by twine, are bars of white soap. They’re tattooed with teeth marks, almost gnawed in half.
* * *
A sparrow delivers a sequence of shrill calls and thrashes its wings. Xenie wonders if it’s a message of distress, a warning that’s being relayed through the forest from some distant sector. She watches the song repeat, the sound rippling through the creature’s slender distended throat.
* * *
The keening voices of those old ballads Shaun loved. She wonders if she ever understood what those songs truly contained.
* * *
They stop at a split in the path. Xenie scoops up a palmful of dried pellets and sifts them through her fingers, watching how they tumble onto the pine needles, trying to divine their arrangement like tea leaves. Something about these deer droppings isn’t right. Many are misshapen and ghostly pale. She shuts her eyes, takes a succession of deep breaths, then steps straight ahead. She’s not concerned with strictly following the path as much as tapping into that invisible route that feels like the path.
I can’t afford to get lost.
I don’t know this place anymore.
The sporadic trail transforms into a furrowed thoroughfare. Soon they find themselves entering an expansive clearing. Xenie and Eddie instinctively crouch behind some bushes. They’re on the cusp of what appears to be an immense homeless encampment.
The camp is uninhabited, for the moment. Threadbare quilts are strung from a network of clotheslines, demarcating the different spaces. Some are staged with eviscerated sofas and battered Barcaloungers, others with skeletal tents containing vestigial scraps of canvas. A full-length mirror leans against an oak. Strewn throughout the sparse grass are plastic bases from a children’s kickball game.
They notice how everything is gathered around a fire pit, a scorched stretch of earth encircled by busted metal stools. In the distance rests the burned-out hull of a car, its charred hood covered with bouquets of faded plastic roses.
* * *
Neither of them speaks. The panic scribbled across their features effaces everything else. Xenie is determined not to be the first to open her mouth. This is a test for Eddie. The path to true camaraderie is narrow. It allows only one correct response.
He sizes up the situation. His voice sounds dubious, but he manages to force the words past his teeth.
—Probably be smarter to turn back, Eddie whispers. Or cut around the camp. But I say we go for it.
Xenie can’t help but smile, emboldened by the fake bravado he’s summoned on her behalf.
—Right, she says. Let’s do it.
* * *
Xenie leads them into the clearing. They advance as soundlessly as possible, careful to avoid the crinkling candy wrappers, bulbous condoms. The baby pram stacked with rusted cans of cat food. They weave slowly between the quilts, making sure the roughly patched fabric remains motionless, trying not to ruffle the air.
* * *
It’s not a natural feature of the woods. As they get closer, it becomes clear the mound of dirt in the center of the camp is man-made. It rises to their waists. The mound has been constructed from countless shovelfuls, carefully tamped down, adorned with small round stones. Xenie feels a cold rush in her veins. It’s a grave.
—Who do you think is buried here? Eddie whispers.
She circles the mound, running her fingers along the contours, calculating the proportions.
—I know he was cremated, Xenie says.
—I know it can’t be him, she says.
She scoops up a handful of dirt and inhales its scent. She must be imagining the familiar hint of spicy cologne. Flecks of soil stick to her flaring nostrils.
* * *
Hoots and hisses erupt from the surrounding bushes. There’s a pounding rhythm of whipping leaves and throttled branches. Sounds made by humans. Eddie and Xenie are afraid to look too closely. The napes of their necks prickle. Their stomachs make a fist. They’ve stupidly walked into a trap, and the layer of dirt beneath their feet suddenly feels perilously thin, as if the forest floor is hinged.
* * *
They stand back-to-back. Eddie picks up several sharp rocks and hurls them into the bushes. He emits a series of wordless shrieks and thumps his fists against his skinny collarbone. He acts unexpectedly possessed. His face transforms into a mask of pure ferocity. A wild scarlet pucker.
*
* *
Xenie steps toward the noises. She hoists her tattered waitress uniform aloft. The shredded dress appears to signify the aftermath of an unspeakable assault. The defiant cape of a gored matador. We’re right here, she bellows. Come and get us. More hoots from the bushes. Lower and more sinister. Accompanied by the swish of rattling sticks. Her feet are fixed firmly in the clearing, unflinched.
* * *
There are scattered growls, but nobody shows themselves. It’s easy to picture men with peeling parchment skin and biblical beards, women with patchy scalps and zealous eyes, each of their frames held together with thick ropes and ensnarled rags. But Xenie wonders if maybe these unseen vagrants are more frightened than she is. Instead of organ butchers and feral perverts, they’re pathetic creatures too timid to appear.
* * *
With defiant slowness, Xenie places her uniform atop the dirt mound. She smooths the edges of the dress so it covers as much of the exposed earth as possible. The tattered fabric serves as an offering, a crucial step in a ceremony she doesn’t know how to name.
Maybe this is where it belongs.
As they exit the camp, Xenie steps on a soggy cloth that sticks to the bottom of her boot.
It turns out to be a miniature sweater. A peculiar herringbone pattern. A garment knitted with exquisite care and delicacy.
A sweater perfectly proportioned for a squirrel.
* * *
Dusk has fallen and the scenery feels two-dimensional, the expanse of surrounding trees flattened into wallpaper. Their silence has a preoccupied quality. A search for words to make the incident comprehensible. They act as if nothing unusual happened, but Eddie still clutches a handful of stones and Xenie’s wrists won’t stop trembling. She wants to touch Eddie but doesn’t trust herself. If she takes his hand to steady herself, she’ll surely unravel.
* * *
Xenie says: I wasn’t scared.
—Me neither.
Xenie says: I was pretty sure they wouldn’t do anything. Besides, I could tell you were itching for it. Looking for an excuse to let loose.
—What do you mean?
Xenie says: The rocks, the screaming. It was primal. You’ve obviously got a lot of pent-up violence.